Tiger Team wants to test tech capabilities for accounting of disclosures

The Privacy and Security Tiger Team that advises the Health IT Policy Committee on Tuesday discussed the potential launch of pilot projects to test technology for updating accounting of disclosure requirements for protected health information.

Such pilots, Healthcare Info Securityreports, could test the ability of electronic health systems to support proposals for accounting of disclosures, which in turn could help assess whether technical capabilities to support accounting of disclosures should even be included in future stages of Meaningful Use.

Paul Egerman, co-chair of the Tiger Team, said that the overall goal of the pilots would be to "match policy with what technology currently does."

"We are trying to do something on a national scale, but we have no data on what will work," Egerman said.

The Tiger Team, according to the article, is looking to present its final recommendations to the HIT Policy Committee at its next meeting, scheduled for Dec. 4.

In late September, the Tiger Team held a virtual hearing to look for "realistic" ways to provide patients with greater transparency about how their electronic health information is both used and disclosed. Deborah Peel, Founder and Chair of the Patient Privacy Rights coalition, suggested in testimony given at the meeting that accounting for disclosures needs to include all of the detailed information about all uses of a patient's electronic health information; she added that the rule could be implemented by "piggybacking" onto existing initiatives, such as the Blue Button movement.

The proposed accounting for disclosures rule, which implements the provision in the HITECH Act extending the existing accounting of disclosures law when records were in electronic form, was issued in 2011. The rule created a furor within the industry, with many saying that it was overreaching and impracticable.